


Threadbare

by signalbeam



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Clothing, Community: badbadbathhouse, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Kimono, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-13
Updated: 2009-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-18 11:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signalbeam/pseuds/signalbeam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chie misplaces her clothes. Luckily, Yukiko's happy to lend Chie something of hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threadbare

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the badbadbathhouse prompt: _Anon would love a story involving a couple sharing clothes. Be it a shirt at night, or a jacket later in the day, or what have you. Highlighting the couple's differences through these clothes would make me very happy indeed._

“It looks good on you,” Yukiko offers when Chie cringes at the mirror and covers her face with one long sleeve to hide her blush from herself.

“Pink,” she declares, “doesn’t look good on me.”

“It makes you look very feminine,” Yukiko says, a little distracted. Chie always gets flustered when Yukiko calls her feminine, as though it is some weakness that she is pleased to have. It is not an attitude Yukiko really understands, not when her parents have drilled the importance of being a Proper Young Lady into her very kernel of being. She’s never had the indulgence of pursuing whatever she wants, but maybe, even if given a choice, she would still prefer skirts to shorts, dresses to pants; delicate prints of spiraling flowers and gentle vines rather than bold, daring stripes or plaid. She doesn’t know if she wants to find out.

Yukiko is looking for the rest of Chie’s clothes. Somewhere along the way to Yukiko’s room last night, they managed to not only misplace Chie’s favorite green jacket, but also her police uniform, bra, and socks. Nearly everything, more or less. She finds nothing but articles of her own clothing, and she folds them, almost by instinct. Chie’s clothes must be in the hall, and she nearly opens the door. Then she remembers she hasn’t buttoned her shirt.

This, she thinks, is the problem with buttoned shirts. She misses the times when she could go outside in a v-neck and a skirt and be considered relatively dressed up. These days it’s a skirt and blouse and more makeup than she has use for, and earrings and a ring Chie gave her, and she still feels as though her business partners are looking at her as though she’s severely underdressed. It’s probably the lack of a tie, but that’s for men—no, the blazer, that is what she needs. More blazers, except the ones she inherited from her mother are entirely unflattering on her. Too many shoulder pads.

Chie’s staring into the mirror, as though the person on the other side isn’t quite who she’s expecting. “You don’t think I look weird or anything, do you?”

“You look fine,” Yukiko says, checking her appearance in the mirror quickly before sliding the door of her room open. Walk as though a customer might come around the corner at any moment; hold yourself as though people are watching you. People call it grace, but it’s really training and habit, and the knowledge that her mistakes will likely end in people losing their trust in her and her family name.

Chie sticks her head out of the door frame. Her hair is still uncombed. Yukiko wants to reach out and smooth it.

“Any luck?” she asks.

“No,” Yukiko says. “Maybe they’re still out by the hot springs.”

“I’ll go look with you,” she says, and then takes one step too large, trips into the narrow skirt, and bangs her knee against the door frame. “Oh, damn,” she says, and hops around for a second. Or hops around the best she can while in clothes that make it nearly impossible to run, bend, or take too deep of a breath. “Okay, this is why I don’t wear these things that often,” she complains.

“You get used to them,” Yukiko says, but she’s grinning and about to start laughing.

“You know what? I think I’ll borrow that single pair of pants you have.”

“But you’re a little too short for them, and if you ruin the hem—”

“Okay, okay, fine. Laugh at me while I ruin this instead.” Yukiko runs a hand through Chie’s hair, and fixes the part. The complaint in Chie’s face mingles with the humor, and then fades away entirely. “I don’t know how I left the house before you were there to fix me up,” she says with a little grin. “I must’ve gone to class everyday looking like a mess.”

“You always looked good to me,” Yukiko says.

“You can say that _now_.” Chie leans against the door, but carefully. It is, after all, made of wood and paper, and there’s already a hole in Yukiko’s wall that Yukiko still can’t muster up the courage to ask anyone to fix. The sleeve of the kimono slides down Chie’s arm, and Yukiko feels a sudden urge to fix it. She suppresses it. Chie, after all, can commit all the faux pas she wants; and, maybe, Yukiko likes Chie’s disorderliness, how with Chie she doesn’t feel bad about not being the daughter people want her to be, even if she looks like she is, or about laughing so hard that she once made a little girl cry. She still doesn’t know what happened, but Chie teases her about it all the time.

She kisses Chie lightly on the lips, and rests her hand on Chie’s shoulder. The cloth, she thinks, is too thick, and it’s virtually impossible to see any of Chie’s best features through the tube of the kimono’s main body; and she understands, suddenly, why Chie is always so eager to get her out of her clothes. She ends up with her hands on Chie’s face, because that’s the only part of her that feels familiar, and soon her eyes are drifting closed and—someone sets something down right at her feet.

“Excuse me,” says the maid, her face red, and rushes out and around the corner.

For a moment, all Yukiko can do is stare at the package. Clothing, each piece separated with thin paper, and everything folded perfectly. She’s still cupping Chie’s face. She lets go, a little more hastily than she expects to, and scoops up the clothes. Socks, skirt, jacket, bra—

“Oh, man,” is all Chie can say, burying her face in the sleeves, while Yukiko laughs herself sick.


End file.
